RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



AN ESTIMATE OF 



HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS 



3n $roee <xnt> (Perse 



A. BRONSON ALCOTT 



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ILLUSTRATED 




EOSTON 
CUPPLES & HURD, PUBLISHERS 

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T2>)fc3i 

Copyright, 1882, 
By A. BRONSON ALCOTT. 

Copyright, 1888, 
By CUPPLES & HURD. 



All rights reserved. 



SECOND EDITION. 



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"J2(T7iSQ yuq ol t& neivibvtct dge/Liuara OaXXbv i\ viva 
xaqnov ngooelovTeg ayovai, ov e^tol Xdyovg ovtco ttqo- 
teivtav bp fiifiXloig if\p re " AxxiKr)v (paiveu negid^tv 
u.iauav xai onot, uv allocre fiovkji, 

Plato, Phcedr. p. 230 D. 



" For as men lead hungry creatures by holding out 

a green bough or an apple, so you, it would seem, 

might lead me about all Attica and wherever else 

you please, by holding toward me discourses out of 

your books." 

Plato. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

TO 

MARY E. STEARNS. 



Concord, July 5, 1865. 
My dear Mrs. Stearns. 

The gift of the birthday was truly a " surprise." 
There lay a more beautiful book than Aldus or Elzevir 
ever made, slipped into the house as carelessly as a 
roseleaf or a dandelion- down blown in at the window. 
Mr. Alcott'snote indicated a " friend," without naming 
him or her. And when I came to read the text, that, 
too, was such a Persian superlative on the poor merits 
of the subject, that I had to shade my eyes as if to 
accept only a part of the meaning. I may shake your 
belief in my good sense, if I say I don't know but I 
suffered more than I enjoyed ; but I soon came to 
admire the lyrical tone of all this remarkable writing, 
inspired by the most generous sentiment, fortified, too, 
by the wish to convey the good- will of other friends 
who made him their spokesman. So I made a cove- 
nant with myself to join these friends in ignoring the 
infirm actuality, stoutly holding up the ideal outline of 



the poor man we were talking of. And now I have 
learned to look at the book with courage, and at least 
to thank the friends who jointly completed it, very 
heartily, for this rare and exquisite work of kindness. 
I have been twice tempted to send you some verses 
on this occasion, as they would be really more fit 
carriers of what I have to say ; and perhaps I yet shall, 
though the rhyming fit seldom comes to me. 
Ever gratefully, 

Your deeply obliged, 

R. W. EMERSON. 

Mrs. Mary E. Stearns. 



PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 



The publishers have here presented a book about 
Emerson, written by the one man who stood nearest 
to him of all men ; one from whom he drew inspira- 
tion in generous measure, and to whom, in return, he 
discovered without reserve his inmost self. Such a 
book cannot fail to be an original and vital contribu- 
tion to Emersoniana. Not to read it, is to miss 
a clear and searching exegesis of one whose name has 
been called the greatest in American literature. It 
is like a portrait of one of the old masters, painted by 
his own brush. 

The introductory sonnet to Emerson is pitched in 
& lofty key, and condenses into fourteen pithy lines a 
statement of the author's life-long debt of friend- 
ship — material and spiritual. The essay itself was 
written twenty-odd years ago, while Mr. Alcott was 
still in the full vigor of his intellect. It was privately 
printed, and presented to Emerson on his birthday. 
A limited edition was published for the first time in 
1882, and readily sold. The revision and reading of 
the proof-sheets of this edition was the last literary 



work which Mr. Alcott did, previous to the stroke of 
paralysis which deprived him of the perfect control 
of his faculties, and kept him a prisoner in his room 
ever afterward. It was a work occupying several 
months, as the octogenarian's visits to Boston were 
somewhat infrequent, and often including other busi- 
ness. Such moments as he could give were, of course, 
valuable ; and the publishers, at whose suggestion the 
work was undertaken, would meet him, now in the 
topmost story of some lofty building, and now in some 
dim-lighted basement, where together they would go 
over the unfinished sheets, — time gliding by for the 
nonce, all unheeded. 

So anxious was Mr. Alcott that his work on Emer- 
son should some day be given to the world, that after 
his paralytic shock, when his memory had lost its 
grasp of many things, and among others, of his recent 
labors on his newly published book, — a copy of which 
he had not seen, — he still remembered his former 
earnest wish that it should be made public. And to 
one of his friends, who spent several hours with him 
each week, he remarked with much excitement, on 
two or three occasions, that his essay must be brought 
out at once ; insisting that it should be published in 
the philosophical magazine which his friend edited. 
Finally a copy of the book was brought to him, greatly 
to his astonishment and delight. This is all the more 
touching an incident of his friendship for the great 



Emerson, when it is remembered that the latter more 
than once said that "it would be a pity if i\lcott 
survived him, since he alone possessed the means 
of showing to the world what Alcott really was." — 
(Cabot's Memoir of Emerson, vol. i. p. 281.) 

The book also contains Alcott's " Ion : a Monody," 
— read by him at the Concord School of Philosophy, 
and to which Mr. John Albee, in " The New- York Tri- 
bune," paid the following high praise : " It continues 
for us that tender strain bequeathed by Moschus's 
'Lament for Bion,' Milton's ' Lycidas,' and Shelley's 
' Adonais ; ' but it has a pathos and beauty all its 
own, . . . faultless in tone and in art." 

Mr. Sanborn's ode to Emerson, " The Poet's Coun- 
tersign," also read at the Concord School, completes 
the volume, and makes a worthy addition to that lofty 
form of verse that has enriched the literatures of all 
ages, from Pindar to Tennyson. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson ) 

> . . . Frontispieces 
Portrait of A. Bronson Alcott ) 

Emerson's House at Concord . i 

Emerson's Summer House 56 

The Summer School of Philosophy 59 

Mr. Alcott's Study 67 

Bridge at Concord . ,....'. 81 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Essay i 

Monody 59 

Ode 71 



Misfortune to have lived not knowing thee ! 

T were not high living, nor to noblest end, 

Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity, 

Rich friendship's ornament that still doth lend 

To life its consequence and propriety. 

Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend ! 

By the hand thou took'st me, and did'st condescend 

To bring me straightway into thy fair guild ; 

And life-long hath it been high compliment 

By that to have been known, and thy friend styled, 

Given to rare thought and to good learning bent ; 

Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled. 

Permit me then, thus honored, still to be 

A scholar in thy university. 



ESSAY. 




Emerson's House. 



ESSAY. 



nPHE ancients entertained noble notions 

of the poet. He was an enthusiast 

and a rhapsodist. His work was done in 



surprise and delight. And all good epic 
poets were thought to compose, not by 
choice, but by inspiration ; and so, too, the 
good lyric poets drew, they tell us, "from 
fountains flowing with nectar, and gathered 
flowers from the gardens and glades of 
the Muses; they, like bees, being ever on 
the wing. For the poet was a thing 
light-winged and sacred, unable to com- 
pose until he became inspired, and the 
imagination was no longer under his con- 
trol. For as long as he was in com- 
plete possession of it, he was unable 
to compose verses or to speak oracularly." 
And hence all noble numbers were credited 
by them, not to the poet whom they knew, 
but to the Power working in and through 



him, and making him the most delighted of 
auditors whenever he chanted his verses, 
because he did not conceive them to be 
his. He was the Voice, the favored of 
the Nine. Hence the value they set 
upon discipline as the means of poetic 
divination. The poet, they conceived, 
must be most virtuous. It was essential 
to his accomplishment that he be chaste, 
that he be gentle, that he be noble in his 
generation, that his endowment be older 
than himself; that he descend from a 
race of pure souls, — bring centuries of 
culture in his descent among men, 
ideas of ages in his brain, — enabling 
him to conceive by instinct, and speak 
his experiences unconsciously, as a child 



opens his lips, in his most rapturous 
accents. Therefore, any pretence of own- 
ership in the gift was esteemed an im- 
piety. For a prayer, a song, a tender 
tone, a glance of the eye, all those 
magnetic attractions known to friendship, 
had a like ancestry; were ours personally, 
primarily, as we became worthy of being 
their organs. 

Is it an egotism in us to claim for New 
England and for a contemporary of ours 
parts and antecedents like these ? or shall 
such endowments, admirable always, and 
awakening enthusiasm, be the less prized 
when represented in a countryman of ours, 
and when we have so frequently partaken 
of the pleasure which his books, his 



5 

lectures especially, excite ? I allude, of 
course, to Emerson. A rhapsodist by 
genius, and the chief of his class, his 
utterances are ever a surprise as they are 
a delight to his audiences ; select though 
these are, and not all unworthy of him. 

Hear how Goethe describes him, where 
in his letters to Schiller, he calls the 
rhapsodist — 

"A wise man, who, in calm thought- 
fulness, shows what has happened ; his 
discourse aiming less to excite than to 
calm his auditors, in order that they shall 
listen to him with contentment and long. 
He apportions the interest equally, be- 
cause it is not in his power to balance a 
too lively impression. He grasps back- 



6 

wards and forwards at pleasure. He is 
followed, because he has only to do with 
the imagination, which of itself produces 
images, and up to a certain degree, it 
is indifferent what kind he calls up. He 
does not appear to his auditors, but re- 
cites, as it were behind a curtain ; so there 
is a total abstraction from himself, and it 
seems to them as though they heard only 
the voice of the Muses." 

See our Ion standing there,- — his au- 
dience, his manuscript, before him, — 
himself an auditor, as he reads, of the 
Genius sitting behind him, and to whom 
he defers, eagerly catching the words, — 
the words, — as if the accents were first 
reaching his ears too, and entrancing 



7 

alike oracle and auditor. We admire the 
stately sense, the splendor of diction, and 
are surprised as we listen. Even his 
hesitancy between the delivery of his 
periods, his perilous passages from para- 
graph to paragraph of manuscript, we 
have almost learned to like, as if he were 
but sorting his keys meanwhile for open- 
ing his cabinets; the spring of locks fol- 
lowing, himself seeming as eager as any 
of us to get sight of his specimens, as 
they come forth from their proper draw- 
ers ; and we wait willingly till his gem is 
out glittering; admire the setting, too, 
scarcely less than the jewel itself. The 
magic minstrel and speaker ! whose rhet- 
oric, voiced as by organ-stops, delivers 



8 

the sentiment from his breast in ca- 
dences peculiar to himself; now hurl- 
ing it forth on the ear, echoing - ; then, 
as his mood and matter invite it, dying 

like 

" Music of mild lutes 
Or silver coated flutes, 
Or the concealing winds that can convey 
Never their tone to the rude ear of day." 

He works his miracles with it, as 
Hermes ' did, his voice conducting the 
sense alike to eye and ear by its lyrical 
movement and refraining melody. So his 
compositions affect us, not as logic linked 
in syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, 
or preludes, in which one is not tied to 
any design of air, but may vary his key 
or note at pleasure, as if improvised with- 



out any particular scope of argument ; each 
period, each paragraph, being a perfect 
note in itself, however it may chance 
chime with its accompaniments in the 
piece; as a waltz of wandering stars, a 
dance of Hesperus with Orion. His rhet- 
oric dazzles by circuits, contrasts, an- 
titheses ; Imagination, as in all sprightly 
minds, being his wand of power. He 
comes along his own paths, too, and al- 
ways in his own fashion. What though 
he build his piers downwards from the 
firmament to the tumbling tides, and so 
throw his radiant span across the fissures 
of his argument, and himself pass over 
the frolic arches, — Ariel-wise, — is the skill 
less admirable, the masonry less secure 



IO 

for its singularity ? So his books are 
best read as irregular writings, in which 
the sentiment is, by his enthusiasm, trans- 
fused throughout the piece, telling on the 
mind in cadences of a current under-song, 
and giving the impression of a connected 
whole — which it seldom is, — such is the 
rhapsodist's cunning in its structure and 
delivery. 

The highest compliment we can pay to 
the scholar is that of having edified and 
instructed us, we know not how, unless by 
the pleasure his words have given us. 
Conceive how much the Lyceum owes to 
his presence and teachings ; how great the 
debt of many to him for their hour's 



entertainment. His, if any one's, let the 
institution pass into history, — since his art, 
more than another's, has clothed it with 
beauty, and made it the place of popular 
resort', our purest organ of intellectual 
entertainment for New England and the 
Western cities. And, besides this, its im- 
mediate value to his auditors everywhere, 
it has been serviceable in ways they least 
suspect ; most of his works, having had 
their first readings on its platform, were 
here fashioned and polished in good part, 
like Plutarch's Morals, to become the more 
acceptable to readers of his published 
books. 

And is not the omen auspicious, that 
just now, during these winter evenings, at 



the opening of this victorious year, his 
Sundays have come round again ; the me- 
tropolis, eager, as of old, to hear his 
words. Does it matter what topic he 
touches ? He adorns all with a severe 
sententious beauty, a freshness and sanc- 
tion next to that of godliness, if not that 
in spirit and effect. 

"The princely mind, that can 
Teach man to keep a God in man ; 
And. when wise poets would search out to see 
Good men, behold them all in thee." 

Tis near thirty years since his first book, 
entitled " Nature," was printed. Then fol- 
lowed volumes of Essays, Poems, Orations, 
Addresses ■ and during all the intervening 
period down to the present, he has read 



13 

briefs of his lectures through a wide range, 
from Canada to the Capitol ; in most of 
the Free States ; in the large cities, East 
and West, before large audiences ; in the 
smallest towns and to the humblest com- 
panies. Such has been his appeal to the 
mind of his countrymen, such his accept- 
ance by them. He has read lectures in 
the principal cities of England also. A 
poet, speaking to individuals as few others 
can speak, and to persons in their privi- 
leged moments, he must be heard as none 
others are . The more personal he is, the 
more prevailing, if not the more popular. 

Because the poet, accosting the heart 
of man, speaks to him personally, he is 
one with all mankind. And if he speak 



eloquent words, these words must be cher- 
ished by mankind, — belonging as they do 
to the essence of man's personality, and, 
partaking of the qualities of his Creator, 
they are of spiritual significance. While, in 
so far as he is individual only, — unlike any 
other man, — his verses address special 
aptitudes in separate persons ; and he will 
belong, not to all times, but to one time 
only, and will pass away,- — except to 
those who delight in that special mani- 
festation of his gifts. 

Now were Emerson less individual, ac- 
cording to our distinction, that is, more 
personal and national, — as American as 
America, — then were his influence so 
much the more diffusive, and he the Priest 



l 5 

of the Faith earnest hearts are seeking. 
Not that religion is wanting here in New 
England ; but that its seekers are, for the 
most part ; too exclusive to seek it inde- 
pendent of some human leader, — religion 
being a personal oneness with the Person 
of Persons ; a partaking of Him by put- 
ting off the individualism which distracts 
and separates man from man. Hence 
differing sects, persuasions, creeds, bibles, 
for separate peoples, prevail all over the 
earth ; religions, being still many, not one 
and universal, not personal ; similar only 
as yet in their differences. Still the re- 
ligious sentiment, in binding all souls to 
the Personal One, makes the many par- 
take of him in degrees lesser or greater. 



i6 

Thus far, the poets in largest measure ; 
mankind receiving through them its purest 
revelations, they having been its inspired 
oracles and teachers from the beginning 
till now. The Sacred Books, — are not 
these Poems in spirit, if not in form? 
their authors inspired bards of divinity? 
Meant for all men in all ages and states, 
they appeal forever to the springing faiths 
of every age, and so are permanent and 
perennial, as the heart itself and its ever- 
lasting hopes. 

See how the Christian Theism, for in- 
stance, has held itself high above most 
men's heads till now ; its tender truths 
above all cavil and debate by their tran- 
scendent purity and ideal beauty ! how 



i7 

these truths still survive in all their 
freshness, keeping verdant the Founder's 
memory ! and shall to distant generations ; 
churches, peoples, persons, a widening 
Christendom, flourishing or fading as they 
spring forth, or fall away from this living 
stem. 

"The Sun of Man, at last the son of woman, 
Brother of all men, and the Prince of Peace, 
Grafts, on the solemn valor of the Roman, 
Fresh Saxon service ; and the wit of Greece." 

Now, am I saying that our poet is in- 
spiring this fresher Faith ? Certainly I 
mean to be so understood ; he, the chief- 
est of its bards and heralds. Not spoken 
always, 'tis implied, nevertheless, in his 
teachings ; defective, it is admitted, as col- 



ored by his temperament; which trenches 
on Personal Theism not a little by the 
stress he lays on Nature, on Fate ; yet more 
nearly complementing the New England 
Puritanism than aught we have, and com- 
ing nearest to satisfying the aspirations of 
our time. 

But it were the last thought of his, 
this conceiving himself the oracle of any 
Faith, the leader of any school, any sect 
of religionists. His genius is ethical, 
literary ; he speaks to the moral senti- 
ments through the imagination, insinua- 
ting the virtues so, as poets and moralists 
of his class are wont. The Sacred Class, 
the Priests, differ in this,— they address 
the moral sentiment directly, thus en- 



19 

forcing the sanctions of personal right- 
eousness, and celebrating moral excellence 
in prophetic strain. 

Tis everything to have a true believer 
in the world, dealing with men and mat- 
ters as if they were divine in idea and 
real in fact ; meeting persons and events 
at a glance directly, not at a million re- 
moves, and so passing fair and fresh into 
life and literature, the delight and orna- 
ment of the race. 

Pure literatures are personal inspira- 
tions, springing fresh from the Genius of 
a people. They are original ; their first 
fruits being verses, essays, tales, biogra- 
phies — productions as often of obscure as 
of il ustrious persons. And such, so far as 



20 

we have a literature, is ours. Of the rest, 
how much is foreign both in substance 
and style, and might have been produced 
elsewhere ! His, I consider original and 
American ; the earliest, purest our coun- 
try has produced, — best answering the 
needs of the American mind. Consider 
how largely our letters have been enriched 
by his contributions. Consider, too, the 
change his views have wrought in our 
methods of thinking ; how he has won 
over the bigot, the unbeliever, at least to 
tolerance and moderation, if not to ac- 
knowledgment, by his circumspection and 
candor of statement. 

" His shining armor 
A perfect charmer; 



21 

"Even the home's of divinity- 
Allow him a brief space, 
And his thought has a place 
Upon the well-bound library's chaste shelves, 
Where man of various wisdom rarely delves." 

Am I extravagant in believing that our 
people are more indebted to his teach- 
ings than to any other person who has 
spoken or written on his themes during 
the last twenty years, — are more indebted 
than they know, becoming still more so ? 
and that, as his thoughts pass into the 
brain of the coming generation, it will be 
seen that we have had at least one mind of 
home growth, if not independent of the 
old country ? I consider his genius the 
measure and present expansion of the 
American mind. And it is plain that he 



22 

is to be read and prized for years to 
come. Poet and moralist, he has beauty 
and truth for all men's edification and de- 
light. His works are studies. And any 
youth of free senses and fresh affections 
shall be spared years of tedious toil, — in 
which wisdom and fair learning are, for 
the most part, held at arm's length, 
planet's width, from his grasp, — by grad- 
uating from this college. His books are 
surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a 
sprightly wit. They abound in strong 
sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, sub- 
tile insights, noble morals, clothed in a 
chaste and manly diction, and fresh with 
the breath of health and progress. 

We characterize and class him with the 



23 

moralists who surprise us with an acci- 
dental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of 
phrase, — as Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, 
Marcus Antoninus, Saadi, Montaigne, 
Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Goethe, Cole- 
ridge, — with whose delightful essays, not- 
withstanding all the pleasure they give 
us, we still plead our disappointment at 
not having been admitted to the closer 
intimacy which these loyal leaves had with 
their owner's mind before torn from his 
notebook; jealous, even, at not having 
been taken into his confidence in the 
editing itself. 

We read, never as if he were the dog- 
matist, but a fair-speaking mind, frankly 
declaring his convictions, and committing 



24 

these to our consideration, hoping we may 
have thought like things ourselves ; often- 
est, indeed, taking this for granted as he 
wrote. There is nothing of the spirit of 
proselyting, but the delightful deference 
ever to our free sense and right of opin- 
ion. He might take for his motto the 
sentiment of Henry More, where, speak- 
ing of himself, he says: "Exquisite dis- 
quisition begets diffidence ; diffidence in 
knowledge, humility; humility, good man- 
ners and meek conversation. For my 
part, I desire no man to take anything I 
write or speak upon trust without can- 
vassing, and would be thought rather to 
propound than to assert what I have here 
or elsewhere written or spoken. But 



25 

continually to have expressed my diffi- 
dence in the very tractates and colloquies 
themselves, had been languid and ridicu- 
lous." 

Then he has chosen a proper time and 
manner for saying his good things ; has 
spoken to almost every great interest as 
it rose. Nor has he let the good oppor- 
tunities pass unheeded, or failed to make 
them for himself. He has taken discre- 
tion along as his constant attendant and 
ally ; has shown how the gentlest temper 
ever deals the surest blows. His method 
is that of the sun against his rival for the 
cloak, and so he is free from any madness 
of those, who, forgetting the strength of 
the solar ray, go blustering against men's 



26 

prejudices, as if the wearers would run 
at once against these winds of opposition 
into their arms for shelter. What higher 
praise can we bestow on any one than 
to say of him, that he harbors another's 
prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as 
to give him, for the time, the sympathy 
next best to, if, indeed, it be not edifica- 
tion in, charity itself? For what disturbs 
and distracts mankind more than the un- 
civil manners that cleave man from man ? 
Yet for his amendment letters, love, Chris- 
tianity, were all given ! 

How different is he in temper and man- 
ners from Carlyle, with whom he is popu- 
larly associated! but who, for the most 
part, is the polemic, the sophist, the 



27 

scorner: whose books, opened anywhere, 
show him berating the wrong he sees, 
but seeing, shows never the means of 
removing. Ever the same melancholy 
advocacy of work to be done under the 
dread master; force of stroke, the right 
to rule and be ruled, ever the dismal 
burden. Doomsday books are all save 
his earliest — Rhadamanthus sitting and 
the arbiter. He rides his Leviathan as 
fiercely as did his countryman, Hobbes, 
and can be as truculent and abusive; the 
British Taurus, and a mad one. Were 
he not thus possessed and fearfully in 
earnest, we should take him for the har- 
lequin he seems, nor see the sorrowing 
sadness playing off its load in this gro- 



28 

tesque mirth, this scornful irony of his; 
he painting in spite of himself his por- 
traits in the warmth of admiration, the 
fire of wrath, and giving mythology for 
history; all the while distorting the facts 
into grimace in his grim moods. Yet, 
what breadth of perspective, strength of 
outline! the realism how appalling, the 
egotism how enormous, — all history show- 
ing in the background of the one figure, 
Carlyle. Burns, Goethe, Richter, Mira- 
beau, Luther, Cromwell, Frederick, — all 
dashed from his flashing pen, heads of 
himself, alike in their unlikeness, pro- 
digiously individual, willful, some of them 
monstrous ; all Englishmen with their 
egregious prejudices and pride ; no pa- 



20 

tience, no repose in any. He still bran- 
dishes his truncheon through his pages 
with an adroitness that renders it unsafe 
for any, save the few that wield weapons 
of celestial temper, to do battle against 
this Abaddon. Silenced he will not be ; 
talking terribly against all talking but his 
own ; agreeing, disagreeing, all the same ; 
he, the Jove, permitting none, none to 
mount Olympus, till the god deigns si- 
lence and invites. Curious to see him, 
his chin aloft, the pent thunders rolling, 
lightnings darting from under the bold 
brows, words that tell of the wail within, 
accents not meant for music, yet made 
lyrical in the cadences of his Caledonian 
refrain ; his mirth mad as Lear's, his hu- 



3° 

mor as willful as the wind's. Not himself 
is approachable by himself even. And 
Emerson is the one only American de- 
serving a moment's consideration in his. 
eyes. Him he honors and owns the bet- 
ter, giving him the precedence and the 
manners : 

"Had wolves and lions seen but thee, 
They must have paused to learn civility." 

r 

Of Emerson's books I am not here 
designing to speak critically, but of his 
genius and personal influence rather. 
Yet, in passing, I may say, that his. book 
of " Traits" deserves to be honored as 
one in which England, Old and New, 
may take honest pride, as being the live- 



3i 

liest portraiture of British genius and 
accomplishments, — a book, like Tacitus, 
to be quoted as a masterpiece of histor- 
ical painting, and perpetuating the New 
Englander's fame with that of his race. 
Tis a victory of eyes over hands, a 
triumph of ideas. Nor, in my judgment, 
has there been for some time any criti- 
cism of a people so characteristic and 
complete. It remains for him to do like 
justice to New England. Not a metaphy- 
sician, and rightly discarding any claims 
to systematic thinking; a poet in spirit, 
if not always in form ; the consistent ideal- 
ist, yet the realist none the less, he has 
illustrated the learning and thought of 
former times on the noblest themes, and 



come nearest of any to emancipating the 
mind of his own time from the errors and 
dreams of past ages. 

Why nibble longer there, 
Where nothing fresh ye find, 
Upon those rocks? 

Lo ! meadows green and fair ; 
Come pasture here your mind, 
Ye bleating flocks. 

There is a virtuous curiosity felt by 
readers of remarkable books to learn 
something more of their author's literary 
tastes, habits and dispositions than these 
ordinarily furnish. Yet, to gratify this 
is a task as difficult as delicate, requiring 
a diffidency akin to that with which one 



33 

would accost the author himself, and with- 
out which graceful armor it were imperti- 
nent for a friend even to undertake it. 
We may venture but a stroke or two 
here. 

All men love the country who love 
mankind with a wholesome love, and have 
poetry and company in them. Our essay- 
ist makes good this preference. If city 
bred, he has been for the best part of his 
life a villager and countryman. Only a 
traveller at times professionally, he prefers 
home-keeping ; is a student of the land- 
scape; is no recluse misanthrope, but a 
lover of his neighborhood, of mankind, of 
rugged strength wherever found ; liking 
plain persons, plain ways, plain clothes ; 



prefers earnest people, hates egotists, 
shuns publicity, likes solitude, and knows 
its uses. He courts society as a specta- 
cle not less than a pleasure, and so 
carries off the spoils. Delighting in the 
broadest views of men and things, he 
seeks all accessible displays of both for 
draping his thoughts and works. And 
how is his page produced ? Is it im- 
aginable that he conceives his piece as a 
whole, and then sits down to execute 
his task at a heat ? Is not this imagin- 
able rather, and the key to the compre- 
hension of his works ? Living for com- 
position as few authors can, and holding 
company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, 
subservient to thought, his products are 



3^ 

gathered as they ripen, and stored in his 
commonplaces ; the contents transcribed 
at intervals, and classified. The order 
of ideas, of imagination, is observed in 
the arrangement, not that of logical se- 
quence. You may begin at the last para- 
graph and read backwards. Tis Iris-built. 
Each period is self-poised ; there may be 
a chasm of years between the opening 
passage and the last written, and there 
is endless time in the composition. 
Jewels all ! separate stars. You may 
have them in a galaxy, if you like, or 
view them separate and apart. But every 
one knows that, if he take an essay or 
verses, however the writer may have 
pleased himself with the cunning work- 



36 

manship, 'tis all cloud-fashioned, and 
there is no pathway for any one else. 
Cross as you can, or not cross, it mat- 
ters not ; you may climb or leap, move in 
circles, turn somersaults ; 

" In sympathetic sorrow sweep the ground," 

like his swallow in Merlin. Dissolving 
views, projects, vistas open wide and 
far,— -yet earth, sky, realities all, not illu- 
sions. Here is substance, sod, sun ; much 
fair weather in the seer as in his leaves. 
The whole quarternion of the seasons, 
the sidereal year, has been poured into 
these periods. Afternoon walks furnished 
the perspectives, rounded and melodized 
them. These good things have all been 



37 

talked and slept over, meditated standing 
and sitting, read and polished in the ut- 
terance, submitted to all various tests, 
and, so accepted, they pass into print. 
Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains, 
were set on foot, and sent jaunting about 
the fields, along wood-paths, by Walden 
shores, by hill and brook-sides, — to come 
home and claim their rank and honors too 
in his pages. Composed of surrounding 
matters, populous with thoughts, brisk 
with images, these books are wholesome, 
homelike, and could have been written 
only in New England, in Concord, and by 
our poet. 

"Because I was content with these poor fields, 
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 



And found a home in haunts which others 

scorned, 
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
And granted me the freedom of their state ; 
And in their secret senate have prevailed 
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, 
Made moon and planets parties to their bond, 
And through my rock-like, solitary wont 
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. 
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the 

spring, 
Visits the valley; — break away the clouds, — 
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air, 
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. 
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird, 
Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree, 
Courageous, sing a delicate overture 
To lead the tardy concert of the year. 
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May ; 
And wide around, the marriage of the plants 
Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain 
The surge of summer's beauty ; dell and crag, 



39 

Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade. 
Are touched with Genius. Yonder ragged cliff 
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. 



The gentle deities 
Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, 
The innumerable tenements of beauty, 
The miracle of generative force, 
Far-reaching concords of astronomy 
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds ; 
Better, the linked purpose of the whole, 
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty 
In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. 
The polite found me impolite ; the great 
Would mortify me, but in vain ; for still 
I am a willow of the wilderness, 
Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts 
My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, 
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 
A wild- rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
Salve my worst wounds. 



40 

For thus the Avood-gods murmured in my ear : 
' Dost love our manners ? Canst thou silent lie ? 
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass 
Into the winter night's extinguished mood? 
Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 
And being latent feel thyself no less? 
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, 
The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure; 
Yet envies none, none are unenviable.' " 

I know of but one subtraction from 
the pleasure the reading of his books — 
shall I say his conversation ? — gives me, 
his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as 
if he feared any the least intrusion of him- 
self were an offence offered to self-respect 
the courtesy due to intercourse and au- 
thorship ; thus depriving his page, his 
company, of attractions the great masters 



4i 

of both knew how to insinuate into their 
text and talk, without overstepping the 
bounds of social or literary decorum. 
What is more delightful than personal 
magnetism? Tis the charm of good fel- 
lowship as of good writing. To get and 
to pfive the largest measures of satisfac- 
tion, to fill ourselves with the nectar of 
select experiences, not without some in- 
tertinctures of egotism so charming in a 
companion, is what we seek in books of 
the class of his, as in their authors. We 
associate diffidence properly with learning, 
frankness with fellowship, and owe a cer- 
tain blushing reverence to both. For 
though our companion be a bashful man, 
— and he is the worse if wanting this 



42 

grace,— we yet wish him to be an enthu- 
siast behind all reserves, and capable of 
abandonment sometimes in his books. I 
know how rare this genial humor is, this 
frankness of the blood, and how surpas- 
sing is the gift of good spirits, es- 
pecially here in cold New England, where, 
for the most part, 

" Our virtues grow 
Beneath our humors, and at seasons show." 

And yet, under our east winds of re- 
serve, there hides an obscure courtesy in 
the best natures, which neither tempera- 
ment nor breeding can spoil. Sometimes 
manners the most distant are friendly foils 
for holding eager dispositions subject to 



the measure of right behavior. T is not 
every New Englander that dares venture 
upon the frankness, the plain speaking, 
commended by the Greek poet. 

" Caress me not with words, while far away 
Thy heart is absent, and thy feelings stray ; 
But if thou love me with a faithful breast, 
Be that pure love with zeal sincere exprest ; 
And if thou hate, the bold aversion show 
With open face avowed, and known my foe." 

Fortunate the visitor who is admitted 
of a morning for the high discourse, or 
permitted to join the poet in his after- 
noon walks to Walden, the Cliffs, or else- 
where, — hours likely to be remembered, 
as unlike any others in his calendar of 
experiences. I may say, for me they have 



44 

made ideas possible, by hospitalities given 
to a fellowship so enjoyable. Shall I de- 
scribe them as sallies oftenest into the • 
cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies 
ever new ? none the less novel nor remote 
than when first experienced ; colloquies, in 
favored moments, on themes, perchance 

" Of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute ; " 
nor yet 

" In wand'ring mazes lost," 

as in Milton's page ; 

But pathways plain through starry alcoves high, 
Or thence descending to the level plains. 

Interviews, however, bringing their 
trail of perplexing thoughts, costing 



45 

some days' duties, several nights' sleep 
oftentimes, to restore one to his place and 
poise for customary employment ; half a 
dozen annually being full as many as the 
stoutest heads may well undertake without 
detriment. 

Certainly safer not to venture without 
the sure credentials, unless one will have 
his pretensions pricked, his conceits re- 
duced in their vague dimensions. 

"Fools have no means to meet 
But by their feet." 

But to the modest, the ingenuous, the 
gifted, welcome ! Nor can any bearing 
be more poetic and polite than his to all 
such, to youth and accomplished women 



4 6 

especially. I may not intrude farther than 
to say, that, beyond any I have known, 
his is a faith approaching to superstition 
concerning- admirable persons; the divinity 
of friendship come down from childhood, 
and surviving yet in memory if not in 
expectation; the rumor of excellence of 
any sort, being like the arrival of a new 
gift to mankind, and he the first to proffer 
his recognition and hope. His affection 
for conversation, for clubs, is a lively in- 
timation of the religion of fellowship. 
He, shall we say? if any, must have taken 
the census of the admirable people of his 
time, numbering as many among his 
friends, perhaps, as most living Ameri- 
cans; while he is already recognized as 



the representative mind of his country, 
to whom distinguished foreigners are 
especially commended on visiting us. 

Extraordinary persons may be forgiven 
some querulousness about their company, 
when we remember that ordinary people 
often complain of theirs. Impossible for 
such to comprehend the scholar's code of 
civilities, — disposed as men are to hold all 
persons to their special standard. Yet 
dedicated to high labors, so much the 
more strict is the scholar with himself, as 
his hindrances are the less appreciable, 
and he has, besides, his own moods to 
humor. 

" Askest how long thou shalt stay, 
Devastator of the day?" 



4 8 

" Heartily know, 
When half-gods go, 
The Gods arrive." 

Companionableness comes by nature. 
We meet magically, and pass with sound- 
ing manners; else we encounter repulses, 
strokes of fate ; temperament telling 
against temperament, precipitating us 
into vortices from which the nimblest 
finds no escape. We pity the person who 
shows himself unequal to such occasions; 
the scholar, for example, whose intellect 
is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot 
meet his company otherwise than criti- 
cally ; cannot descend through the senses 
or the sentiments to that common level 
where intercourse is possible with men ; 



49 

but we pity him the more, who, from 
caprice or confusion, can meet through 
these only. Still worse the case of him 
who can meet men neither as sentimen- 
talist nor idealist, or, rather not at all in 
a human way. Intellect interblends with 
sentiment in the companionable mind, 
and wit with humor. We detain the 
flowing tide at the cost of lapsing out 
of perception into memory, into the 
limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder 
why they cannot meet and converse. 
They cannot, — no — their wits have ebbed 
away, and left them helpless. Why, but 
because of hostile temperaments, differ- 
ent states of animation ? The personal 
magnetism finds no conductor, when one 



5° 

is individual, and die other individual no 
less. Individuals repel; persons meet; 
and only as one's personality is suffi- 
ciently overpowering to dissolve the 
other's individualism, can the parties flow 
together and become one. But individ- 
uals have no power of this sort. They 
are two, not one, perhaps many. Pris- 
oned within themselves by reason of 
their egotism, like animals, they stand 
aloof; are separate even when they 
touch ; are solitary in any company, hav- 
ing no company in themselves. But the 
free personal mind meets all, is appre- 
hended by all ; by the least cultivated, 
the most gifted ; magnetizes all ; is the 
spell-binder, the liberator of every one. 



5i 

We speak of sympathies, antipathies, 
fascinations, fates, for this reason. 

Here we have the key to literary com- 
position, to eloquence, to fellowship. Let 
us apply it, for the moment, to Emerson's 
genius. We forbear entering into the 
precincts of genesis, and complexions, 
wherein sleep the secrets of character and 
manners. Eloquent in trope and utter- 
ance when his vaulting intelligence frees 
itself for the instant, yet see his loaded 
eye, his volleyed period ; jets of wit, sallies 
of sense, breaks, inconsequences, all be- 
traying the pent personality from which 
his rare accomplishments have not yet 
liberated his gifts, nor given him unre- 
servedly to the Muse and mankind. 



5^ 

Take his own account of the matter. 

" When I was born, 
From all the seas of strength Fate rilled a chalice, 
Saying : ' This be thy portion, child : this chalice, 
Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw 
From my great art eries, — not less nor more.' 
All substances the cunning chemist, Time, 
Melts down into the liquor of my life, — 
Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust ; 
And whether I am angry or content, 
Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, 
All he distils into sidereal wine, 
And brims my little cup, heedless, alas ! 
Of all he sheds, how little it will hold, 
How much runs over on the desert sands. 
If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, 
And I uplift myself into its heaven, 
The needs of the first sight absorb my blood ; 
And all the following hours of the day 
Drag a ridiculous age. 
To-day, when friends approach, and every hour 



S3 

Brings book, or star-bright scroll of Genius, 
The little cup will hold not a bead more, 
And all the costly liquor runs to waste ; 
Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop 
So to be husbanded for poorer days. 
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice ? 
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught, 
After the master's sketch, fills and o'erfills 
My apprehension? Why seek Italy, 
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea 
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn 
The nearest matter for a thousand days ? " 

Plutarch tells us that of old they were 
wont to call men (pcora, which imports 
light, not only for the vehement desire 
man has to know, but to communicate 
also. And the Platonists fancied that 
the gods, being above men, had some- 
thing whereof man did not partake, pure 



54 

intellect and knowledge, and thus kept 
on their way quietly. The beasts, being 
below men, had something whereof man 
had less, sense and growth, so they lived 
quietly in their way. While man had 
something in him whereof neither gods 
nor beasts had any trace, which gave him 
all the trouble, and made all the confusion 
in the world, — and that was egotism and 
opinion. 

A finer discrimination of gifts might 
show that Genius ranges through this 
threefold dominion, partaking in turn of 
each essence and degree. 

Was our poet planted so fast in intel- 
lect, so firmly rooted in the mind, so 
dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by 



55 

duplicity of gifts, that, thus forced to 
traverse the mid-world of contrast and 
contrariety, he was ever glancing forth 
from his coverts at life as reflected through 
his dividing prism, — resident never long 
in the tracts he surveyed, yet their 
persistent Muse nevertheless ? And so, 
housed in the Mind, and thence sallying 
forth in quest of his game, whether of 
persons or things, he was the Mercury, 
the merchantman of ideas to his century. 
Nor was he left alone in life and thinking. 
Beside him stood his townsman," 55 " whose 
sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in sense 
and Nature, was yet armed with a sagac- 
ity, a subtlety and strength, that pene- 

* Thoreau. 



56 

trated while divining the essences of 
the creatures and things he studied, and 
of which he seemed both Atlas and Head. 
Forcible protestants against the ma- 
terialism of their own, as of preceding 
times, these masterly Idealists substan- 
tiated beyond all question their right to 
the empires they swayed, — the rich estates 
of an original genius. 



ION: A MONODY. 




The Summer School of Philosophy, Concokd, Mass. 



ION: A MONODY. 

By A. BRONSON ALCOTT. 
Read before the Concord School of Philosophy, July 22, 1882. 



I. 

Why, oh, ye willows, and ye pastures bare, 
Why will ye thus your bloom so late delay, 
Wrap in chill weeds the sere and sullen day, 
And cheerless greet me wandering in despair? 
Tell me, ah, tell me ! — ye of old could tell, — 
Whither my vanished Ion now doth fare. 
Say, have ye seen him lately pass this way, 
Ye who his wonted haunts did know full well? 
Heard ye his voice forth from the thicket swell, 
Where midst the drooping ferns he loved to stray ? 
Caught ye no glimpses of my truant there ? 
Tell me, oh, tell me, whither he hath flown — 
Beloved Ion flown, and left ye sad and lone, 
Whilst I through wood and field his loss bemoan, 



6o 



II. 
Early through field and wood each Spring we sped, 
Young Ion leading o'er the reedy pass ; 
How fleet his footsteps and how sure his tread ! 
His converse deep and weighty ; — where, alas ! 
Like force of thought with subtlest beauty wed ? 
The bee and bird and flower, the pile of grass, 
The lore of stars, the azure sky o'erhead, 
The eye's warm glance, the Fates of love and dread,- 
All mirrored were in his prismatic glass ; 
For endless Being's myriad-minded race 
Had in his thought their registry and place, — 
Bright with intelligence, or drugged with sleep, 
Hid in dark cave, aloft on mountain steep, 
In seas immersed, ensouled in starry keep. 

III. 
Now Echo answers lone from cliff and brake, 
Where we in springtime sauntering loved to go, — 
Or at the mossy bank beyond the lake, 
On its green plushes oft ourselves did throw : 
There from the sparkling wave our thirst to slake, 



6i 

Dipped in the spring that bubbled up below, 
Our hands for cups, and did with glee partake. 
Next to the Hermit's cell our way we make, 
Where sprightly talk doth hold the morning late ; 
Deserted now : ah, Hylas, too, is gone ! 
Hylas, dear Ion's friend and mine, — I all alone, 
Alone am left by unrelenting fate, — 
Vanished my loved ones all, — the good, the great, — 
Why am I spared ? why left disconsolate ? 

IV. 

Slow winds our Indian stream through meadows green, 
By bending willows, tangled fen and brake, 
Smooth field and farmstead doth its flow forsake ; 
'Twas in far woodpaths Ion, too, was seen, 
But oftenest found at Walden's emerald lake, 
(The murmuring pines inverted in its sheen ;) 
There in his skiff he rippling rhymes did make, 
Its answering shores echoing the verse between : 
Full-voiced the meaning of the wizard song, 
Far wood and wave and shore, with kindred will, 
Strophe, antistrophe, in turn prolong : — ■ 



62 

Now wave and shore and wood are mute and chill, 
Ion, melodious bard, hath dropt his quill, 
His harp is silent, and his voice is still. 

V. 

Blameless was Ion, beautiful to see, 

With native genius, with rich gifts endowed ; 

He might of his descent be nobly proud, 

Yet meekly tempered was, spake modestly, 

Nor sought the plaudits of the noisy crowd, 

When Duty called him in the thick to be. 

His life flowed calmly clear, not hoarse nor loud ; 

He wearied not of immortality, 

Nor like Tithonus begged a time-spun shroud ; 

But life-long drank at fountains of pure truth, 

The seer unsated of eternal youth. 

'T is not for Ion's sake these tears I shed, 

'T is for the Age he nursed, his genius fed, — 

Ion immortal is, — he is not dead. 

VI. 
Did e'en the Ionian bard, Maeonides, 
Blind minstrel wandering out of Asia's night, 



63 

The Iliad of Troy's loves and rivalries, 
In strains forever tuneful to recite. 
His raptured listeners the more delight? 
Or dropt learned Plato 'neath his olive trees, 
More star-bright wisdom in the world's full sight, 
Well garnered in familiar colloquies, 
Than did our harvester in fields of light ? 
Nor spoke more charmingly young Charmides, 
Than our glad rhapsodist in his far flight 
Across the continents, both new and old ; 
His tale to studious thousands thus he told 
In summer's solstice and midwinter's cold. 

VII. 

Shall from the shades another Orpheus rise 
Sweeping with venturous hand the vocal string, 
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise, 
And wake to ecstacy each slumberous thing ; 
Flash life and thought anew in wondering eyes, 
As when our seer transcendent, sweet, and wise, 
World-wide his native melodies did sing, 
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories? 



6 4 

Ah, no ! his matchless lyre must silent lie, 
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill 
To touch that instrument with art and will ; 
With him winged Poesy doth droop and die, 
While our dull age, left voiceless, with sad eye 
Follows his flight to groves of song on high. 

VIII. 
Come, then, Mnemosyne ! and on me wait, 
As if for Ion's harp thou gav'st thine own ; 
Recall the memories of man's ancient state, 
Ere to this low orb had his form dropt down, 
Clothed in the cerements of his chosen fate ; 
Oblivious here of heavenly glories flown, 
Lapsed from the high, the fair, the blest estate, 
Unknowing these, and by himself unknown : 
Lo ! Ion, unfallen from his lordly prime, 
Paused in his passing flight, and, giving ear 
To heedless sojourners in weary time, 
Sang his full song of hope and lofty cheer ; 
Aroused them from dull sleep, from grisly fear, 
And toward the stars their faces did uprear. 



65 

IX. 

Why didst thou haste away, ere yet the green 

Enameled meadow, the sequestered dell, 

The blossoming orchard, leafy grove were seen 

In the sweet season thou hadst sung so well ? 

Why cast this shadow o'er the vernal scene ? 

No more its rustic charms of thee may tell 

And so content us with their simple mien. 

Was it that memory's unrelinquished spell 

(Ere man had stumbled here amid the tombs,) 

Revived for thee that Spring's perennial blooms, 

Those cloud-capped alcoves where we once did dwell: 

Translated wast thou in some rapturous dream ? 

Our once familiar faces strange must seem, 

Whilst from thine own celestial smiles did stream ! 

X. 

I tread the marble leading to his door, 
(Allowed the freedom of a chosen friend ; ) 
He greets me not as was his wont before, 
The Fates within frown on me as of yore, — 
Could ye not once your offices suspend? 



66 

Had Atropos her severing shears forbore ! 

Or Clotho stooped the sundered thread to mend ! 

Yet why dear Ion's destiny deplore ? 

What more had envious Time himself to give ? 

His fame had reached the ocean's farthest shore, — 

Why prisoned here should Ion longer live ? 

The questioning Sphinx declared him void of blame j 

For wiser answer none could ever frame ; 

Beyond all time survives his mighty name. 

XL 

Now pillowed near loved Hylas' lowly bed, 
Beneath our aged oaks and sighing pines, 
Pale Ion rests awhile his laureled head ; 
(How sweet his slumber as he there reclines !) 
Why weep for Ion here ? He is not dead, 
Nought of him Personal that mound confines ; 
The hues ethereal of the morning red 
This clod embraces never, nor enshrines. 
Away the mourning multitude hath sped, 
And round us closes fast the gathering night, 
As from the drowsy dell the sun declines, 




Mr. Alcott's Study. 



67 

Ion hath vanished from our clouded sight, — 
But on the morrow, with the budding May, 
A-field goes Ion, at first flush of day, 
Across the pastures on his dewy way. 



THE POET'S COUNTERSIGN. 



THE POET'S COUNTERSIGN. 



An Ode read by F. B. Sanborn, at the opening of the Concord 
School, July 17, 1882. 



" I grant, sweet soul, thy lovely argument 
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen ; 
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent, 
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again ; 
He lends thee virtue, — and he stole that word 
From thy behavior ; beauty doth he give, 
And found it on thy cheek ; he can afford 
No praise to thee but what in thee doth live." 

I. 

Across these meadows, o'er the hills, 
Beside our sleeping waters, hurrying rills, 
Through many a woodland dark, and many a bright 
arcade, 



72 

Where out and in the shifting sunbeams braid 

An Indian mat of checquered light and shade, — 

The sister seasons in their maze, 

Since last we wakened here 

From hot siesta the still drowsy year, 

Have led the fourfold dance along our quiet ways,— 

Autumn apparelled sadly gay, 

Winter's white furs and shortened day, 

Spring's loitering footstep, quickened at the last, 

And half the affluent summer went and came, 

As for uncounted years the same — 

Ah me ! another unreturning spring hath passed. 

II. 

" When the young die," the Grecian mourner said, 

" The springtime from the year hath vanished ; " 

The gray-haired poet, in unfailing youth, 

Sits by the shrine of Truth, 

Her oracles to spell, 

And their deep meaning tell ; 

Or else he chants a bird-like note 



73 

From that thick-bearded throat 

Which warbled forth the songs of smooth- cheeked May 

Beside Youth's sunny fountain all the day ; 

Sweetly the echoes ring 

As in the flush of spring ; 
At last the poet dies, 
The sunny fountain dries, — 
The oracles are dumb, no more the wood-birds sing. 



III. 

Homer forsakes the billowy round 

Of sailors circling o'er the island-sea ; 

Pindar, from Theban fountains and the mound 

Builded in love and woe by doomed Antigone, 

Must pass beneath the ground ; 

Stout ^Eschylus that slew the deep-haired Mede 

At Marathon, at Salamis, and freed 

Athens from Persian thrall, 

Then sung the battle call, — 

Must yield to that one foe he could not quell ; 



74 

In Gela's flowery plain he slumbers well.* 

Sicilian roses bloom 

Above his nameless tomb ; 
And there the nightingale doth mourn in vain 
For Bion, too, who sung the Dorian strain ; 
By Arethusa's tide, 

His brother swains might flute in Dorian mood, — 
The bird of love in thickets of the wood 
Sing for a thousand years his grave beside — 
Yet Bion still was mute — the Dorian lay had died. 

IV. 

The Attic poet at approach of age 
Laid by his garland, took the staff and scrip, 
For singing robes the mantle of the sage, — 
And taught gray wisdom with the same grave lip 
That once had carolled gay 

Where silver flutes breathed soft and festal harps did 
play; 

* Athenian iEschylus Euphorion's son, 
Buried in Gela's field these words declare: 
His deeds are registered at Marathon, 
Known to the deep-haired Mede who meet him there. 

— Greek Anthology. 



75 

Young Plato sang of love and beauty's charm, 

While he that from Stagira came to hear 

In lyric measures bade his princely pupil arm, 

And strike the Persian tyrant mute with fear. 

High thought doth well accord with melody, 

Brave deed with Poesy, 

And song is prelude fair to sweet Philosophy. 

But wiser English Shakspeare's noble choice, 

Poet and sage at once, whose varied voice 

Taught beyond Plato's ken, yet charming every ear ;- 

A kindred choice was his, whose spirit hovers here. 



V. 



Now Avon glides through Severn to the sea, 
And murmurs that her Shakspeare sings no more \ 
Thames bears the freight of many a tribute shore, 
But on those banks her poet bold and free, 
That stooped in blindness at his humble door, 
Yet never bowed to priest or prince the knee, 
Wanders no more by those sad sisters led ; 



7 6 

Herbert and Spenser dead 

Have left their names alone to him whose scheme 

Stiffly endeavors to supplant the dream 

Of seer and poet, with mechanic rule 

Learned from the chemist's closet, from the surgeon's 

tool. 
With us Philosophy still spreads her wing, 
And soars to seek Heaven's King — 
Nor creeps through charnels, prying with the glass 
That makes the little big, — while gods unseen may pass. 

VI. 

Along the marge of these slow-gliding streams, 

Our winding Concord and the wider flow 

Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams 

A throng of poets, — tearfully they go ; 

For each bright river misses from its band 

The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel 

hand, — 
They sleep each on his wooded hill above the sorrow- 
ing land. 



77 

Duly each mound with garlands we adorn 

Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn, — 

Sadly above them wave 

The wailing pine-trees of their native strand ; 

Sadly the distant billows smite the shore, 

Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar ; 

All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair, 

On earth, in sea or air, 

Droop and grow silent by the poet's grave. 

VII. 

Yet wherefore weep ? Old age is but a tomb, 
A living hearse, slow creeping to the gloom 
And utter silence. He from age is freed 
Who meets the stroke of Death and rises thence 
Victor o'er every woe j his sure defence 
Is swift defeat ; by that he doth succeed. 
Death is the poet's friend — I speak it sooth ; 
Death shall restore him to his golden youth, 
Unlock for him the portal of renown, 
And on Fame's tablet write his verses down, 



• 78 

For every age in endless time to read. 

With us Death's quarrel is : he takes away 

Joy from our eyes — from this dark world the day- 

When other skies he opens to the poet's ray. 

VIII. . 

Lonely these meadows green, 

Silent these warbling woodlands must appear 

To us, by whom our poet-sage was seen 

Wandering among their beauties, year by year, — 

Listening with delicate ear 

To each fine note that fell from tree or sky, 

Or rose from earth on high : 

Glancing that falcon eye, 

In kindly radiance as of some young star, 

At all the shows of Nature near and far, 

Or on the tame procession plodding by, 

Of daily toil and care, — and all life's pageantry ; 

Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love, 

Wide as the sun's great orbit, and as high above 

These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply. 



79 

IX. 

His was the task and his the lordly gift 
Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift; 
He found us chained in Plato's fabled cave, 
Our faces long averted from the blaze 
Of Heaven's broad light, and idly turned to gaze 
On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave 
That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted ; 
By shadows haunted 

We sat, — amused in youth, in manhood daunted, 
In vacant age forlorn, — then slipped within the grave, 
The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud ; 
These captives, bound and bowed, 
He from their dungeon like that angel led 
Who softly to imprisoned Peter said, 
" Arise up quickly ! gird thyself and flee ! " 
We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our 
souls were free. 

X. 

Ah ! blest those years of youthful hope, 

When every breeze was Zephyr, every morning May ' 



8o 

Then as we bravely climbed the slope 
Of life's steep mount, we gained a wider scope 
At every stair, and could with joy survey 
The track beneath us, and the upward way ; 
Both lay in light — round both the breath of love 
Fragrant and warm from Heaven's own tropic blew ; 
Beside us what glad comrades smiled and strove ! 
Beyond us what dim visions rose to view ! 
With thee, dear Master ! through that morning land 
We journeyed happy : thine the guiding hand, 
Thine the far-looking eye, the dauntless smile ; 
Thy lofty song of hope did the long march beguile. 

XI. 

Now scattered wide and lost to loving sight 

The gallant train 

That heard thy strain ; 

'T is May no longer, — shadows of the night 

Beset the downward pathway; thou art gone, 

And with thee vanished that perpetual dawn 

Of which thou wert the harbinger and seer. 




Bridge at Concord. 



Si 

Yet courage ! comrades, — though no more we hear 
Each other's voices, lost within this cloud 
That time and chance about our way have cast, 
Still his brave music haunts the hearkening ear, 
As 'mid bold cliffs and dewy passes of the Past. 
Be that our countersign ! for chanting loud 
His magic song, though far apart we go, 
Best shall we thus discern both friend and foe. 



3U77-7 



